Give girls a greenlight in STEM around the world!

At the end of the first workshop at our g4g Day @Abuja in Nigeria, a young girl delicately broke off pieces of spaghetti, analyzing the exact size and shape before carefully putting them between marshmallows to create the third and final layer of her tower - an engineering masterpiece! The workshop leader surveyed all the girls’ structures, congratulating them on their strong design ideas before she posed a question: what was the most challenging aspect of building a tower with only spaghetti and marshmallows as materials? One girl said that it was understanding how to support the tower; another said that it was deciding on the best design. And what was the most interesting part of the workshop? That same girl who was so careful in her creation, shyly raised her hand and confessed that she had always known she wanted to go into medicine, but now she knew that she wanted to be an engineer. That moment of inspiration was her favourite part!

We find inspiration all around us every day, but those moments where inspiration meets insight are certainly ones to remember. In our very FIRST launch in Nigeria, 100 girls aged 11-15 put that to the test with fun, hands-on activities on chemistry, neuroscience, coding, physics and more at the Education Resource Centre!

In fact, these past few months have been full of science & technology inspiration in BIG ways...

“Everything starts with a spark of inspiration, which leads to something… BIG!” A perfect message for an exciting opening to the 7-day adventure promoting and engaging girls in STEM in Mumbai, India this past October. We teamed up with our global partner, Covestro, and Nehru Science Centre to engage over 1000 girls overall in the region!!! All of us were so impressed with the creative ideas and questions from the girls as they pondered the future impact of technology.

From there, we had a fantastic day with 100 bright and enthusiastic young women at our global partner Nokia's R&D Bangalore location. With enthusiastic STEM role models, the girls had the chance to dive into 5G technology, Internet of Things, virtual reality, DNA exploration – and a special workshop by our partner Stanley Black & Decker on creativity and engineering.

That same week, a member of our team went to Brazil for our 4th annual g4g Days @Ouro Branco where 185 girls extracted their own DNA, learned about spectroscopy, explored human DNA extraction, dove into mathematics, and created their own electric circuits! One of our favourite moments actually came after the event when one of the attendees, Julia, wrote us explaining, "When my teacher said to us that we were going to make a school trip only for girls I thought that the trip would interesting but I got surprised when we got there because it wasn’t only interesting, it was inspiring, captivating, fascinating and so meaningful for me, I mean it! This project opened doors for me. Today I started thinking about a lot of things I can do in my life that I had never thought before." How absolutely amazing to hear!!

STEM inspiration followed us to Moscow, Russia where 100 girls dipped into polymer putty & more at g4g Day @Moscow in partnership with Covestro and the Science Festival Nauki. We also had the chance to engage over 200 young boys and girls at g4g Day launches in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, USA! And we had the opportunity to engage 25 girls at a unique event at the European Parliament in Brussels, showcasing libraries as modern tech hubs.

Giving a greenlight for girls doesn’t just mean inspiring them in STEM – it's also about continued support and encouragement in all that they do while sharing how STEM connects to the world around them in new ways. And this happens all because of you – our wonderful supporters – who continue to generously give and share everyday.

In just a few months, we engaged over 1,700 girls – a new & AMAZING record!! Congratulations and a huge thank you for helping us get there every single step of the way!

And the best part? We have excited greenlight girls waiting for us in Brussels, Shanghai, and Madrid in the next few weeks... so stay tuned :)

Un grand merci and thank you to our dedicated donors for your continuous support, and helping us inspire and empower the next generation of STEM leaders. Over the past few months we have reached 400 more girls across continents – from Paris, France, to Canberra, Australia, to London, England – all possible because of you!

During these events, the girls had wonderful opportunities to discover all aspects of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths – but, with an extra special occasion to dive into the latest cutting-edge technology, and to be inspired to "code" new possibilites for their futures. 

At our very first g4g Day launch at the Nokia Campus in Paris-Saclay this past June, we welcomed 200 girls from the surrounding area for a full day of hands-on workshops, including on 4G and 5G technology, coding, electricity and circuits, virtual reality, prototyping with visual programming tools, and fruit batteries as girls used lemons, pennies, nails and more to transform chemical energy into electrical energy.

A favourite activity was when the girls teamed up to explore the science and technology of drones and radio communication…. with the help of soap box racing as cameras followed their every twist and turn!

A few weeks later on the other side of the world, greenlight girls in Canberra got ready to celebrate National Science Week in style, with a full day of hands-on STEM discovery at our second annual g4g Day @Canberra. There, 160 girls aged 10-16 learned about the phenomenon of light and the role it plays in the environment, captured celestial images with deep sky imaging software, created cool robotics and bristlebots, and even became biodiversity detectives with seeds and bees! In a surprise science activity, the girls got to meet a VIP guest marsupial native to Australia while learning about wildlife conservation… a bettong!

What made this year even more special included an opportunity for participants to hear from young girl science mentors from the venue Melrose High School – a huge hit! – and to share their experiences in STEM.

Plus, a g4g Day wouldn’t be complete with virtual technology… and the girls even created their own 3D #VR time-lapse video of the day – which you can check out here: http://bit.ly/2xhPdXX.

The g4g team also traveled to London, where we invited 30 enthusiastic girls to the offices of a technology company in the insurance world for an interactive morning of DNA extraction, coding, and tasting the sweet side of statistics with M&Ms. They had a chance to hear from the CEO of the company and role model engineers who reminded us that anything is possible with passion and perseverance (we couldn't have said it better ourselves!)

As we step into September, our g4g team is looking forward to sharing all the exciting upcoming events around the world with you – so get ready to join us as we go to London, Krakow, Abuja, Croydon, Moscow, New York City, Bangalore, Brussels, and Shanghai! In the meantime, we invite you to check out some of the wonderful support we have also received lately in the press:

- g4g Day @Houston with Covestro: http://bit.ly/2qsuNZm

-  g4g@work Day at AIG in Dublin: http://bit.ly/2eOJpO0

- Our three-city launch with Nokia in Finland: http://nokia.ly/2lYrJQR

Again, a sincere thank you from all of us for your generous support, and from all the greenlight girls whose lives you've made a difference in across the continents!